


let it all out

by Fxckxxp



Category: Red White & Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston
Genre: Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fluff, Light Angst, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:20:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22487809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fxckxxp/pseuds/Fxckxxp
Summary: Henry opens up about his dad, about grief, about hope and love and every terrible, beautiful thing.
Relationships: Alex Claremont-Diaz/Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor
Comments: 33
Kudos: 214





	let it all out

Henry isn’t asleep. At least not anymore.

The only reason Alex knows this is because he isn’t asleep either.

He feels Henry curled around his back, chest pressing on his bare shoulders, one floor up in _their_ ( — Alex says _their,_ Henry says _their_ — even though it’s _technically_ Henry’s and Alex _technically_ lives on campus... but Alex has never been one to get stuck on a technicality) Brooklyn brownstone. His breaths aren’t deep, his hand on Alex’s stomach won’t stop twitching.

Alex palms the surface of the nightstand for his phone in the dark, bright blue screen hurting his eyes and making him squint when he checks the time. Just after three.

“You okay, love?” Henry whispers in his ear.

“Can’t sleep,” Alex chuckles. “Old news.” He turns around in Henry’s arms, wiggles his eyebrows and pushes his hips forward. He knows one way they could get tired.

But Henry’s face is stoic, princely resigned. That expression Alex used to hate because he thought it was _oh so holier than thou._ But now he sees it for what it is — a mask.

Henry’s a fool for thinking he can trick Alex with it.

“Are _you_ okay?” Alex repeats, a hand coming up to find Henry’s face. He strokes his thumb right under his bottom lip, in the dip above his chin.

Henry clears his throat and closes his eyes, sighing deep through his nose. Alex feels it on his wrist. There’s a long pause, the silence sticky and heavy with something not quite yet said. 

“He would have been fifty-nine today.”

_Oh._ Alex stills. Henry’s told him about his dad. In life. The stories usually stop at his diagnosis, and Alex will never forget the way his voice sounded on the phone when Henry said: “It happened so… quickly. He just _went.”_

Only recently has Henry casually began to drop his dad into conversation. Usually offhand, cheeky. _James Bond’s son_ this and _where do you think I got my good looks_ that. Never anything deeper than surface level.

Which hurts Alex to know, given what he already knows. He can still close his eyes and clearly see Bea in front of him that night in the music room — listening to her go all “sponsor” (which Alex thinks is code for emotionally intelligent) about the chasm ripped under all Henry’s felt, swallowing everything else. 

He wants to jump down in that chasm, fight all of the demons hurting Henry who keep the cavern carved open and bloody and hungry. He wants to slay them one by one. Fill it with good stuff that pillows everything trying to drop all the way down.

Alex would fight a million wars for Henry. But even he knows that will never fix what happened, that grief is ongoing and loves to rear its ugly head, growing two more like a hydra just after you thought you chopped off the last of it.

For someone whose brain is constantly filled with a stream of _how do I save the world?_ — it’s the biggest contradiction to know Alex can’t even save Henry. Not from this.

Alex pinches his lips, holding back, wanting to spout off about all of this. About how unfair this is, about how Henry doesn’t deserve a single bad thing.

But he knows Henry knows.

One of Henry’s teasing _do you ever shut up?_ ’s rings in Alex’s ears. Like he can read his mind. And somehow he holds back, smiling softly, hoping that smile says _I’m here, sweetheart. Tell me all about it._

“Do you remember when you texted me about your voter registration drive at NYU last year? Right before our birthdays?” Henry’s voice is soft, his eyes are shiny and searching.

Alex is kind of obsessed with the way his brain works. He’s the one person he can never predict. It’s got to be that writer brain of his. He feels it, on the tip of Henry’s tongue, that he’s getting there. Opening up. Just in a roundabout way.

“Yes,” Alex laughs. “And how you immediately rescheduled your nonprofit business like, four seconds after I _mentioned_ it. What I remember more, though, is afterward. You drunkenly spreading icing all over your dick while I speed-chugged a whole bottle of champagne in an open hotel bathrobe.”

Henry laughs, the corner of his mouth pinching. Absentmindedly, Alex moves his thumb from his chin to it, smoothing over the crease it makes on his cheek.

Henry closes his eyes at the touch. “I think that day saved my life,” he whispers.

Fuck. Alex’s throat tightens.

“Twenty-three was a hard birthday for me,” Henry continues, his voice narrowing up like each subsequent word is harder than the last. He shakes his head to himself in perseverance. “March, in general. Every day after that, that’s more than twenty-five percent of my life I’ve spent without him. That number will only grow. I feel like I barely remember the last five and a half years, and I dread the day he will have not been in it longer than he was.” He exhales shakey.

Alex knows that took everything in him to say.

“Fuck. Henry,” Alex starts, feeling his chest constrict. He’s never been through this. Never even had a thought so emotionally and despairingly complex cross his mind. To think of lives lost in percentages this way. With and without. He doesn’t know what to say besides: “I’m so sorry.” A pause. “I’ve read that grief and depression affect memory,” he whispers, not quite sure what more he can offer. His hand on Henry’s cheek smooths down his arm, resting at the soft crook of his elbow.

One of Henry’s eyebrows lift. “And why were you reading up about grief and depression?”

Alex feels his cheeks get hot. But Henry laughs kindly, cutting off the silence with a little trepidation like he wasn’t expecting a real answer.

“I used to dream about him all the time,” he says softly to the ceiling, turning around in Alex’s embrace to lay on his back. “They were the best and the worst dreams. Because he’d be there, you know? And it felt so _real._ And then I would wake up and it was like losing him all over again.”

“Baby,” Alex whispers, pressing his forehead to Henry’s cheek. “Is that what woke you up? A dream?”

He feels Henry nod against him, hears him suck in a sharp breath that falters in his throat.

“It’s been a while,” Henry manages to say. “Since I’ve dreamt about him.”

Alex thinks he feels something wet on the top of his head. He springs up immediately — Henry isn’t allowed to cry. He will kiss every tear that rolls down his cheek, catching them before they fall if he has to. 

And he does. There’s just the one. It makes Henry laugh, and he calls him a _cheesy, cliché wanker._

“But you love it.”

Henry nods. “I do.”

Alex has trouble looking at his face like this. Pink, watery eyes, both despaired and thankful. Patchy cheeks hot from nerves, with a lump welling in his throat he doesn’t want to escape. Alex puts the back of his hand to Henry’s forehead like he’s checking for a fever, then smooths it down the rest of his face to hold it in his hand. Henry softens into him, letting himself be held.

“Are you familiar with Pandora’s box?”

Alex has to chuckle. Now is as good a time as any for _HRH Prince of Classics,_ he supposes. 

“Yes. Er. Sort of.”

“When she opened it, and all of the monsters escaped, hope stayed behind. Dreaming about him kind of feels like that. The moment right before I wake up especially. Like hope is actually a monster.”

Alex’s stomach turns over. “Do you ever talk to him? In your dreams? Or even just in your head?” He sinks down when he says it, cuddling into Henry’s side who wiggles to make room for him. 

He doesn’t really know why he’s asking. Alex thinks it’s something he would do, he guesses. _No one is ever really gone._ But he won’t quote Star Wars right now, not this time. Maybe later.

“Sometimes,” Henry admits, swallowing. “Mostly, I just wonder what he would think of me now. If he would be proud of me.”

“Hey,” Alex says sternly, yanking Henry’s side to turn and face him. “Look at me. He would be _so_ proud of you, Henry. He would be absolutely thrilled with the man that you’ve become.”

Henry’s eyes start to water and there’s a fire inside Alex, a rage at the world for taking something from Henry that can’t be given back, that fills him with doubts and questions that can never be known and only be speculated. The problem is the one doing the speculation has more doubt than anyone else.

“I can’t imagine anyone knowing you, _really_ knowing you and not being proud of you,” Alex affirms. He says it slowly, meaning every word of it and hoping Henry feels the truth in his tone. If he can’t believe it, Alex needs him to feel it. “And if they aren’t, I will fight them.”

Henry laughs, but his face twists. And he’s crying. Really crying now. 

Alex start pulling. At his arms at his wrists at his back. Anywhere he can grab. Pushing Henry into his chest and holding him tight, rocking, and trying not to explode at how bad Henry aches. Alex can almost feel him pulse in his arms, tender and lamenting. 

He takes back what he thought about Henry not being allowed to cry, realizing that no matter how much it hurts him to see, Henry needs to let the hurt inside go somewhere else. Alex will absorb it all for him if he has to.

“I wish I got to tell him,” Henry chokes. “I wish he got to meet you.”

Alex lets him cry, and he tries to be strong. Henry is bigger than him in every way — in height, in heft, and definitely in heart — but right now, he feels so small. Alex wants to protect him from everything. From every hurt, from every weapon, from every mean thought and question inside Henry’s head attacking him on every front.

“He loved you so much,” Alex soothes. He never met the man, but he knows he did. Who couldn’t love Henry? “He would be so proud of you. He would accept you just as you are. And he would just _adore_ me, of course.”

Henry gasps a laugh in the middle of a sob, choking on it and coughing. Alex pats his back, runs his fingers up Henry’s spine and tries not to melt at how soft the ridges feel. Tries not to melt at Henry melting.

Henry takes a deep breath. “Your ego never shrinks, does it?” 

His voice is broken and gentle and sniffly, just jumping — stumbling, really — over the hurdle of hurt to appreciate the joke. Alex loves him for even trying.

“Nope,” Alex says, popping the _P_ dramatically.

He tightens his hold around Henry’s shoulders, smushing his face against his chest, afraid that if he lets go, Henry might crumble. But to his surprise, Henry finds his chin with his hand and angles it down to kiss him so soft his eyes flutter closed on command. Wet eyelashes and all.

Alex hums into it happily for a moment. “But hey,” he pops off. “You’re getting much better at talking about things,” he notes. Then pauses. “You know I’m always here for you, yeah?”

Henry smiles. The kind that travels up to his eyes. Combined with the trace of tears, Alex hates to admit how devastating that combination is.

“I’d say you’re getting much better at listening, but you’ve always been so good. And yeah,” Henry whispers. “I do.”

**Author's Note:**

> if you think Alex didn't drag Henry to the kitchen right after this to make his dad a birthday cake, which they then ate at like, 5 am, you are wrong.
> 
> anyways, you can also find me on [tumblr](https://bisexualcaravaggio.tumblr.com/) :)


End file.
